Local & Not So Local Favorites: Mom's Apple Pie Bakery & Julian Pie Company

While Brian's main Valentine's Day treat was a couple dozen molasses cookies, I wanted to follow that up with a good excuse to try out a nearby pie shop.  We finally headed over to Occoquan to have a bite at Mom's Apple Pie Bakery there.

In a town with limited parking, this locale is blessed with a corner lot with lots of parking, making it easy for a quick stop.

We headed there on a Sunday afternoon, and were tempted by not only pie packaged by the slice or by the whole pie, but also baked goods, jars of candy and gelato.  There is also a great selection of drinks, from specialty sodas to milk.  Or, you can step into the wine shop section of the store for beer or wine (or cheese).

Definitely somewhere we can add to our list of local favorites.

Though they are about 2700 miles apart, this visit brought to mind our favorite pie shop, Julian Pie Company in Julian, California.  I think we discovered this pie shop from a suggested itenerary we found in the front of an atlas, almost ten years ago! It wasn't quite the same feeling to sit outside sharing pie with our two little boys in the Virginia cold, but Brian may have enjoyed his coffee more this time.

Back in the fall of 2005, during our second visit.

First Out of State Trip

I have felt a little trapped in my own house since the baby was born.  I really can't leave with both boys, since I am not supposed to lift Theodore and there are too many instances in any trip where I would have to lift him and I haven't fully started driving yet after my surgery.  And Brian is working as much as possible, so he can't really take us many places.  But today, I made him take us for a little outing.

We couldn't really decide what to do, but I've been wanting to drive up to Lancaster for a while now, so we headed north without any real plans except to find some "orange trees" as we instructed Theo.

By the time we got there around noon, we were quite hungry so we searched for restaurants on our GPS and randomly picked the fifth one it listed - The Smoketown Diner.  Apparently, Smoketown is one of the many, many towns that cluster outside of Lancaster.  It was a small diner, loud enough that Theo wasn't too distracting to everyone else, but quiet enough that the baby stayed asleep pretty much the whole time.  It was a cheap meal, and pretty filling but not too large portions, though we had to wait a bit.  Though I normally don't order dessert, I was excited to see peanut butter pie on the menu and disappointed when they didn't have any.

We picked up a guide and a map here, and were interested by a dairy, and a pretzel shop, and headed that way.

The dairy, Oregon Dairy, turned out to be the perfect place to spend one of the last nice days of the year with both boys.  We ordered some really tasty ice cream and ate out on the ice cream deck which was perfect with the sun warming us.  Theodore then had a great time playing on the playground, and I enjoyed seeing all the white deer they kept there.

Then we traveled just a bit more and came to a nice, historic town called Lititz.  We found  "the first commercial pretzel bakery in America,"  Sturgis Pretzel Bakery.  Though it was too close to nap time for us to take the tour, it looked interesting and was only a couple bucks a person.  We picked up some bags of pretzels, and a few hot freshly baked ones as well.

On our way out, we enjoyed the rest of our scenic, winding drive, and headed home a different route through Gap.  Of course, we had to stop at our cheese shoppe there.  Theo, always the chatterbox, thanked Bill for the cheese as we left with Manchego and an Irish cheddar with porter.

Elijah only cried a little on the drive home, as he was getting a little hungry.  Overall, it was a very successful first outing as a family of four, and Elijah's first time out of his home state.

Lots of Bs

Last Friday night I got the idea that we should focus on only picking activities for our Saturday outings that starts with the letter "B". Don't ask why, I know it was a pretty dorky idea, but it worked out well during the morning.

First-we Biked into town. My first time on a bike in a while, realized how uncomfortable they are. We ended up going about 7 miles.

We first made a stop at Bing's Bakery. I was in the mood for my first ever Black and white cookie, and we otherwise just wanted to check it out. I loved the shop, and got lots of ideas for Brian's Ph.D. celebration in a couple of years.

Then, we went to a Bistro, for lunch. The Adrian Bistro was a coffee shop at the beginning of Main Street with some really good food. I had a delicious BLT, and appreciated the quiet, personal atmosphere.

After that we thought about going bowling, but the lanes were already packed at 11:30 in the morning due to some kind of tournament, so we did a little window shopping and then headed back home.

Later that day, we aborted the B-theme to attend a couple of festivals. All the shops and organizations of Newark came out for the annual Newark Night, which offered lots of food offerings for my hubby. We then headed up to town for the Wilmington Greek Festival, my first foray into Greek culture. I certainly enjoyed the fest, which had a good crowd of happy people eating, drinking, and dancing. We enjoyed the pork souvlaki, baklava, ouzo, and Aris, and will definitely pencil in the festival on next years calendar right now as a must-not-miss.

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Keeping with the B-theme, I was able to try another bagel place today, and think it was definitely my favorite so far. The Sunshine Bagel place in Middletown has a great turkey sandwich (especially on onion bagel).